Lance
Weapon Overview |} Weapon Traits Lances are quite powerful Weapons that should not be overlooked. They have the capacity to deal some pretty decent damage. Lances can be found in the 2 main trees (as usual with almost all weapons). *Lances have an overall high Sharpness bar compared to other weapons (even though almost no natural white bar of sharpness is available in MHF2). *Lances come with a shield and are the best blockers in the game (along with Gunlances). *Lances have a tendency to be accompanied with a defense bonus (although this defense boost is usually minimal). They can be used for tanking but Gunlances are recommended if you choose to take the tanking route. *Lances have a wide variety of elements within, making them suitable for the every situation, although they are not as elementally powerful as the Sword and Shield. *Lances have a long range of attack (due to their length) and have very precise and accurate strikes. This makes them perfect for targeting specific monster parts that other weapons can not as easily reach. *Lances have a middle to high overall damage (compared to their cousins, the gunlances, they have higher damage). *Hunters can land 2 kinds of stabs, frontal and upward, both of them able to chain up to 3 times. *Lance wielder hunters can perform small back jumps and sideways slides (after each one of them you can again chain 3 stabs in any combination). After a back jump, if you hold the analog stick right or left and press X, you can do a slide dodge in that direction (useful if you are unfamiliar with the dodging style and back jump towards a monster). *After performing one jump (or after attacking) the lance can perform a large backstep that is longer than the usual backstep. You can do this by pulling back on the anolog stick and pressing X during your hop after the initial hop or attack. After the large backstep is performed, you can't chain together any more jumps until you reset your combo. This jump also uses more stamina. *Lance hunters can perform a charging attack, which depletes stamina. The charge is relatively weak but can be finished with a powerful front stab (the strongest single Lance attack). *An effective tactic for the Lance's charging attack is to knock the monster down, then charge near a jointed area of the monster (e.g. the joint of rathalos' back and wing, or the joint of any monsters legs and stomach.) It should show you running in place towards said joint but still striking the joint, dealing large amounts of damage. *Lances have the Fast draw and defensive stance abilities. *Some users complain about the lack of mobility, but by backhopping in the direction that you want to travel in you can reach your destination faster than if you were walking with your weapon unsheathed (note: the amour skill Evade Distance Up increases the hop distance of the lance, thus improving evade techniques and unsheathed travel). *Lances have the special ability to become either an impact or cutting weapon (meaning that the lance will take the higher of the two hit zones). For example, when the lance strikes a Rathalos in the head, the cutting hit zone has a value of 80 and the impact hit zone of the head has a value of 70. The game automatically will select the higher value (in this case the 80 cutting hit zone). *In MH3 and MHP3rd, the Lance gained several different attacks that make it far more useful than before. The most important of these is a counterstab that allows the user to deliver an upward stab immediately after blocking an attack. This has made the Lance popular with hunters who favor a more defensive style of playing. Like the SnS, the Lance can also perform a shield bash that deals impact damage. Although now, you have to be guarding to press triangle and circle to perform a charge attack. *In MH4, the lance gains a new attack were in a charge attack, the hunter can do the normal finisher or they can jump and hit the monster and mount them as the other finisher. Movements on Detail Now we will see more details on the movements and even some combos. 'Weapon Sheathed' = Draw weapon = Roll R''' + = Quick Draw & Defensive stance + '''Direction = Quick Draw + Frontal Stab 'Weapon Drawn' R'''(HOLD) = Defense '''R(HOLD) + = Defensive + Frontal Stab R'''(HOLD) + = Defensive + Charge Counter = Small jump back (Can be used as long as there is stamina) = Frontal Stab (Can be chained up to 3 times) = Diagonal Stab (Can be chained up to 3 times) '''After any Stab + Left/Right + = Sideway small jump (Can be used up to 3 times) + = Charging attack (The hunter will run until stamina is depleted) During Charging attack + = Frontal Stab & End of charging attack During Charging attack + = End of charging attack Lance Damage *The lance can be a very powerful weapon if used correctly. It requires a little more skill to wield effectively than other weapons, which tends to scare off some novice hunters *The damage for all Blade masters (melee classes) is calculated using the following formula: x TYPE x CRITICAL x SHARP x HITZONE x DEFENSE x RAGE x VAR/CLASS=Total *Although this formula may seem complicated, it helps to show the difference between damage between the different Lance attacks. *In Monster Hunter, weapons always deal a fixed percent of their raw power based on the chosen attack. *For the lance, the following values indicate the percent of the lance's raw power that each attack uses: ** *Simply put, this chart shows the difference in power between attacks. The higher value indicates a stronger attack. But do these values really make a difference? Let's find out! *Let's say that I use my guard attack on a Low-Rank Rathalos' head using a lance with 322 raw power and green sharpness. According to the damage formula (I won't bore you with the math) you would deal 25 damage. Now if you used that same lance but hit the Rathalos' head with an upward stab (again, I won't bore you with the calculations) you would deal 35 damage. As you can see, the upward stab's higher percent of raw power used does impact the final outcome of damage. The upward stab's 10 more damage (35-25) will significantly reduce your hunting time and will make the hunt noticeably shorter. *Now this doesn't mean only use the more powerful attacks. There is a time and place for everything. With practice (and a lot of patience), you will be able to easily choose the best attack to use against a monster that suits the current situation. Lance Strategies There is no correct strategy to fighting any particular monster. It is up to the hunter to develop one's own strategy that works best for them. Here are just two of the common strategies that many lance users use 'Evade' * The most difficult lancing technique to master is the evade strategy. The reason why many of the expert players use this strategy is because you can kill a monster much faster by evading than by blocking with your shield * For this strategy, you will need armor with the skill "Evade+2" (this skill increases the duration of invincibility while rolling/hopping). The skill "Evade Distance Up" (increases roll/jump distance) is not required, but it does make evading a little bit easier. * Evade+2 will not let you jump through every attack in the game but it lets you evade most of them. * The way the skill works is as the monster tries to hit you, you press the X button to jump backwards (or any other direction of your choice). If you time the jump correctly you will jump right through the attack without taking any damage * This method also helps to save stamina, as back hopping requires much less stamina than blocking. * You can only evade attacks (by hopping through them) if the duration of the monster's attack is short enough. * For example, let's say that you are using low rank Obituary/Butterfly armor which has the skill Evade+2 and you are lancing a Rathalos. The Rathalos' tail swing has a short duration, meaning that if you hop the second that you get hit, you will have successfully have evaded the attack. The fireball attack also has a short duration so if you back hopped through the fireball you will, again, have successfully evaded the attack. * Now lets say that you are lancing an Akantor with Evade+2 armor. Akantor's charge attack has a long duration, so it is only possible to evade the attack by physically moving out of the way. If you back hopped, once you finished with your jump you would still be in the way of Akantor's charge so you would get hit. * The trick to evading through attacks is only to hop through attacks that have a short duration (tail swings, fireballs, bites, claw swings, etc.). * The more experience you gain by using the lance, the easier it will become to determine the correct time and place to either evade or guard. * One of the most useful armor sets would be the Narga X armor from Monster hunter freedom Unite. It gives evade +2 and evade distance up without the need to socket. The set also has a high amount of armor when fully upgraded and plenty of extra slots. (it's kinda the set you gota have) 'Guard' *The guarding strategy is the easier of the two primary lancing strategies but by using this strategy you won't be able to kill monsters as fast as you could've by using the evade strategy *Evading may be used to be able to kill monsters fast, but guarding is not totally useless. That big shield is there for a reason. There are certain attacks that are much easier to defend against by guarding and there a few monsters (such as Black Gravios) that can be killed much quicker by shielding against their attacks. *If you plan to block most of the monster's attacks, then a good armor skill to have would be "Guard+1" (there is an upgrade to this skill, Guard+2, that increases the skill's effectiveness but is rarely useful because Guard+1 will almost always do the trick) *The skill Guard+1 reduces the stamina required to block an attack as well as reducing the knock-back of attacks. This means that for most attacks you won't get pushed back at all from blocking. This is very useful because it saves stamina and the time you save from not getting pushed back helps to reduce the your hunting time. Guard+2 increases these abilities further but it is not worth the slots because Guard+1 should be adequate for the majority of your hunts. *Another skill that can be very useful against certain monsters is "Guard Up". This skill make any previously unblockable attacks now blockable. For example, the Plesioth's beam attack, Gravios's beam attack, and the Khezu's shock blast attack are all unblockable attacks that will go right through your shield if you attempt to block them. With Guard Up, all of these attacks become blockable so now every attack in the game is blockable. *The one downside of Guard Up is that some monster's don't have any unblockable attacks which makes this skill useless against them. If you are fighting a Rathian, you can already block all of its attacks anyways without Guard Up which means that if you are using Guard Up during that fight it becomes a waste of valuable slots. Skills such as Guard+1 would've been much more useful in that situation. *The way to fight a monster using a lance is simple. All you have to do is hit the monster a few times, back hop (it doesn't matter which direction you hop in) and hold block (its faster to cancel a combo with a hop and then shield than to stop attacking, wait for your character to get back into ready stance and then hold down the block button). *Remember, don't get too greedy with your attacks or you will end up getting hit. *Remember, just because these evading and guarding sections are listed under "lance techniques" doesn't mean that if you aren't using one of these strategies you're doing it wrong. *It is up to the hunter to develop his/her own strategies and use whichever one they feel the most comfortable with. *Some may find that they like using an even combination between guarding and evading and use an armor set with Evade+2 AND Guard+1 while others might feel more comfortable using only guarding techniques. *The new counterstab move introduced in Tri makes the guarding strategy much more useful, as it allows a hunter to attack immediately after guarding an attack. Advantages *Incredible range *Considerably good attack power *Many lances also give defense boosts *Most effective guard out of all blademaster weapons *Good sharpness Disadvantages *Dodging is somewhat limited *Small variety of attacks *Very cumbersome to wield See also Weapon Types Weapon Mechanics Portal:Weapons Category:Weapons Category:Lances